Bentwater

Published
11:00 pm CDT, Saturday, July 11, 2015

Recycling is a good thing but, despite appearances, I’m not trying to win points from the MUD 18 board this week. You see, print deadlines wait for no man and mine arrived all too suddenly. Consequently, I’m “recycling” some content I wrote several years ago, which I hope you’ll find acceptable. Here’s something that falls under the heading of things-you-don’t-need-to-know-but-might-find-interesting-if-you-did.

Osage Indians once fashioned powerful bows from a native tree found in portions of Arkansas, Oklahoma and eastern Texas. French explorers subsequently called those trees “bois d’arc” (bow wood), later anglicized into “bodark” (sometimes “bodart”). You’ll see them around Bentwater. They’re the gnarly tree with the wrinkled, sticky fruit (which is on the ground right now) the size of a softball and orangey smell when ripe. Osage-apple, horse-apple, mock-orange, hedge-apple or hedge-ball - no matter what you call it, it might surprise you to learn that, though not particularly appreciated today, the bodark tree actually helped settle our corner of the world. The Osage Indians, valuing its wood for their bows and arrows (and its thorns for needles), traded its seeds as currency. Early pioneers kept livestock in (or out) by planting it around pastures and gardens, and pruning it into prickly hedgerows. When barbed wire replaced hedge rows, the bodark provided fence posts that lasted for generations. Strong as oak and as hard as hickory, it became railroad ties, house foundation blocks, street paving blocks, wagon wheel rims, telephone poles and tool handles. Hard, heavy, tough, and durable, it also shrinks or swells very little compared to other woods making it ideal for insulator pins, treenails, furniture, and archery bows. Many archers still consider it to provide the world’s finest wood for bows. For other uses, the root bark produces a yellow dye, the trunk bark provides leather tannin, and the fruit is a natural insect repellant. Who knew? So, next time you see the ugly, gnarly, messy bodark, stop and smell those horse apples. They helped tame the west, and are a very honorable part of our Texas heritage.

This is your article, Bentwater, and should be about you. But, I can’t write what I don’t know so must rely on you to tell me about events, your family, your neighbors or even yourself. You know how to reach me.